Do Golden Globes Influence Oscars?

While both races for the Oscars® and Golden Globes® are officially underway, the second biggest awards party in the U.S., the 67th Annual Golden Globe Awards Gala will be held first. The date is Sunday, 17 January 2010, at the Beverly Hilton Hotel, Beverly Hills, CA, and broadcast live on NBC at 8:00 p.m., ET. That will be seven days before the Oscar Nomination ballots are due back at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PWC). The Academy Awards® will be held 7 March 2010.

The Golden Globe nominations were announced in mid-December, and the final ballots were mailed to members of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) the same day as the Academy Awards® Nomination ballots. Those final Globe ballots must be received in the Los Angeles offices of the accounting firm of Ernst & Young, Wednesday, 13 January.

For Golden Globe nominees and more, see previous post about the nominations and the Golden Globes Official Website. To find references in this blog, simply type "Golden Globes," or "HFPA" in the search text box at the top left, and click what looks like a magnifying glass at the end of the text box. To access the Website, click the title of this post.

Sponsored by the HFPA and produced by Dick Clark Productions, the Golden Globe Gala will be held this year, as it usually is, before the Oscar Nomination ballots are due back at PWC. Because the Academy Awards are held later than the Globes, each year there is a debate among film critics as how the Globes affect the Oscar nomination process, or if they do.

I have come to believe that the Globes have little impact on the Academy Awards®. Movie critics like to think the Globes do, and that they, the critics, greatly impact both awards, but if the truth be told, and that's what I try to do, critics matter little when it comes to awards. However, I will give them their due by noting that they do seem to have a positive, or negative impact upon the Box Office, depending upon how the majority of critics review a particular movie. Example? This year's AMELIA. A preponderance of critics immediately pummeled it even before it was released. It quickly disappeared from marquees of movie theaters across the country.

Those who vote for the Oscars and those who vote for the Globes are so very different. Therefore, the voting results in these awards are like apples and oranges, as are the ballots of each organization. The fact that the ballots for the Globes and Oscars are different is almost as important as the composition of the voting groups. For example: The members of the HFPA nominate a Best Film in two categories for the Globes, not one: (1) Drama, and (2) Musical or Comedy. There are usually five movies in each of these categories.

The Academy has two Best Film categories, too: Best Feature Motion Picture and Best Foreign Language Film. In both, all feature movies are lumped into one of the categories, regardless of genre. There are usually five nominees in each category. However, this year there will be 10 Best Feature Motion Picture nominees. Actually, the number of films in this category has varied through the years, and this is not the first year that this category will have 10 nominated pictures. It must be noted that the Best Foreign Language Film nominees remain at five nominees.

Members of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) are the biggest voting block in the Academy. The Hollywood Foreign Press Association produces and votes for the Golden Globe recipients. Critics don't vote, unless they also happen to be members of the Academy and/or HFPA.

Members of SAG have a different perspective about movies than do the members of the Foreign Press Association. Therefore, as a amateur voter, I have compared the nominations between the two for years. I fill out my ballot from Entertainment Weekly according to how I think I would vote for the Oscars, if I were a member of SAG. For the Golden Globes, as if I were a member of HFPA. Hey. A girl can dream, can't she? Besides, I'm correct about 90% of the time.